Priya of Berkeley

Kathleen had great things to say about the buffet at Priya (I've linked her post below), so we thought we'd try it out for dinner the other night. The atmosphere looks rather formal (more so than Vik's, that's for sure!) and the menu itself is very fancy -- ornately carved wooden doors open to reveal a booklet of perhaps 20 pages of menu items! South and North Indian specialties...

We were in the mood for something comforting, so we ordered palak paneer a la carte (otherwise known as saag paneer) and the chicken tikka masala thali.

Palak paneer was very flavorful, creamy, and fresh, and full of nice chunks of cheese.

Chicken tikka masala was also very creamy (that's its MO) and quite delicious, although some might find it too sweet.

The thali items that came with the chicken tikka masala were daal (much better than average - usually I don't even touch my daal, but this was good) and two other little tins of sambar or something like it, not to my taste really. I could have eaten them if I'd had to, but everything else was more delicious.

Raita, naan, and rice also came with the thali. All good, especially the raita, which had lots of fresh, yummy onions in it. I haven't seen that very much. The only funny things were the mango lassi and all the peas in the meal! (Peas were in practically everything - not a bad thing, unless you don't happen to like peas.) Mango lassi tasted exactly like mango nectar. I'm not sure I got what I ordered. But it was heat-quenching, so it worked out fine.

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